Senior Software Engineer

About the Role

We are looking for a talented Software Engineer to join our small, collaborative engineering team and play a key role at the heart of our R&D efforts.

This is an exciting opportunity to work on real-time, high-volume transaction systems, big data, cloud-native technologies, and AI-driven engineering, while helping us develop innovative new features.

You will be involved throughout the full development lifecycle — from requirements and technical design through to implementation, testing, deployment, and optimisation across synthetic and real-world datasets.

At Smartology, we believe in doing it right the first time, every time. You will work in an AI-native engineering environment that embraces Agile Scrum, Spec-Driven Development, Test-Driven Development (TDD), and Continuous Delivery.

If you take pride in writing high-quality software, enjoy solving complex problems, and are excited by algorithms, high-performance systems, and meaningful AI challenges, we'd love to hear from you.

🛠️ Main Responsibilities

Team & Collaboration

• Work within an Agile engineering team delivering in one-month sprints.
• Contribute to user stories, story pointing, backlog prioritisation, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
• Take ownership of assigned projects and provide technical leadership from definition through to delivery.
• Ensure technical work is aligned with wider commercial and engineering objectives.
• Actively contribute to improving engineering standards, methods, processes, and practices.
• Support the development of colleagues through knowledge sharing and collaboration.
• Identify and reduce key-person dependencies.
• Ensure sprint commitments are delivered without compromising quality, while taking a pragmatic approach when required.
• Maintain a consistently high standard of engineering quality.

Engineering & Development

• Collaboratively design and implement mathematical and algorithmic models in maintainable, high-performance Java.
• Work on complex systems including:
• Campaign pacing feedback loops
• Auction bid valuation
• Inventory forecasting
• Dynamic matching thresholds
• Constrained optimisation
• Translate complex algorithmic logic into efficient, production-ready software.
• Design robust solutions with scalability, maintainability, and operational support in mind.
• Apply Test-Driven Development (TDD) throughout the development lifecycle.
• Contribute to Continuous Delivery and automated software delivery practices.
• Deploy services to cloud-based infrastructure replicated across multiple global locations.
• Optimise services to consistently exceed response-time SLAs and QPS targets.
• Analyse and resolve complex technical and performance issues.
• Build software capable of operating reliably in high-volume, real-time environments.

🎯 Person Specification

Essential

• University degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Applied Science, or a related discipline.
• Strong, recent hands-on experience with Java 17, with confidence solving diverse and domain-specific engineering problems.
• Proven experience with at least three of the following:
• Spring Boot
• MySQL
• Hibernate
• Python
• Groovy
• Git
• Linux / Unix
• Amazon AWS
• Good understanding of the HTTP protocol and connection pooling.
• Professional experience applying Test-Driven Development (TDD).
• Strong commitment to achieving deadlines and delivering sprint commitments.
• Demonstrable problem-analysis, troubleshooting, and resolution skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Ability to build effective working relationships with technical colleagues and teams across the business.

⭐ Preferred Industry Experience

While strong core Java engineering skills are our priority, we are particularly interested in candidates who have worked in high-performance, real-time, or low-latency environments.

Experience in any of the following industries would be highly relevant:

AdTech

Direct experience working at the RTB (Real-Time Bidding) trading level, including auctions, bidding, pricing, or campaign optimisation.

FinTech & High-Frequency Trading

Experience building low-latency pricing engines, order-routing systems, trading platforms, or risk models.

Logistics & Supply Chain Technology

Experience developing route optimisation, warehouse capacity planning, delivery-time estimation, or dynamic pricing algorithms.

Industrial Automation

Experience building control systems, feedback algorithms, PID loops, or other real-time optimisation systems.

Game Backend Development

Experience developing server-side matchmaking algorithms, in-game economy systems, dynamic drop-rate systems, or other real-time game mechanics.

Desirable

• Java certification.
• Experience with more than three of the following:
• XML / XSL
• JSON
• Gradle
• Dropwizard
• Jenkins
• JavaScript